Goats on a small Somme farm

Nou-Nou, the nanny goat, features throughout much of the early parts of The Song Cannot Be Silenced. Of course, though goats do experience phantom/pseudo-pregnancies, milking traditionally means delivery of a kid or two.

I’ve had a kind of image of Nou-Nou’s lifestyle in my head, as I wrote the early scenes with her, and this painting reflects that image very well.

I’m sorry to say, however, that Nou-Nou does not seem to have any kids to suckle. This absence reflects our early experience, on a smallholding in one of the most remote areas of northern England, where our neighbour brought a pair of tiny kids over to us, shortly after we moved in, to say, with a sad smile, that they would have to be sacrificed so he and the missus could keep their nanny’s milk for themselves.

So we became the owners of Oscar and Lucinda, named after Peter Carey’s novel by the same name, and they gave us many amusing hours during their lives, as they kept the nettles down.

Milking a nanny goat is not as simple as one might think, but fortunately there are useful videos today to help novices in their milking endeavours.